56 WISCONSIN STATE AG HI CULTURAL SOCIETY . 
There can be no doubt that the endowment was given for the 
benefit of farmers, mechanics, machinists, miners, engineers and 
of every class who are producers of wealth by manual labor. No 
class of men is excluded, but for these classes especially is indus¬ 
trial education to be promoted. 
The creation of the law making this liberal donation for such 
education, and the universal favor with which it is regarded, is 
sufficient evidence that a need for such instruction exists. 
There is, then, this question to be answered: “ Of what shall 
such education consist?” The reply is, that it must supply the 
needs of those for whom it was created. With primary education, 
these institutions have directly nothing to do. The common 
schools of the country are the places for such instruction. The 
school of agriculture has no more to do with such training than 
have the schools of law, of medicine or of theology. The ideal 
agricultural or mechanical school should be purely professional, so 
teaching science that it may be applied to practice. Then when 
the practical applications of science are given, the question of 
what shall industrial education consist, would seem to be answered. 
It sometimes appears unfortunate that men have to deal with 
facts, with things as they actually exist, and not as they 
will be when the millenium shall have come. A. superstructure 
cannot be built except upon a foundation, and the strength and 
stability of the superstructure is only equal to that of the weak¬ 
est part of the foundation. Just here lies the great difficulty in 
adjusting a course of study for the industrial classes. 
The highest object of professional education is not to teach 
facts, nor the application of facts, but it is to so teach those prin¬ 
ciples that underlie all practice, that the student may apply them 
for himself, to every special problem that may present itself for 
solution. 
The successful lawyer is not the one who has been taught a 
given set of methods, one of which should apply in any possible 
case, nor is the successful physician the one who has learned cer¬ 
tain remedies, to each one of which some form of disease will 
yield. But it is he who has learned the great fundamental prin¬ 
ciples of his profession, and who has that mental power to so 
